


Rooted (Eames)

by applecameron



Series: Rooted [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7152488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecameron/pseuds/applecameron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames' story of the events in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5435012">"Rooted"</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooted (Eames)

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since someone asked about an Eames POV of the original _Rooted_, I've been pecking at the idea, then outlining the idea, and then…somehow…I wound up writing the idea. Go figure.

Eames recognizes the number and answers after the first ring, "He's awake.  He's awake."

Miles breathes deep, holds it, and releases it.

Eames continues, "I didn't want to call you."

Miles, acutely aware of Cobb's flight and what it might mean in terms of surveillance of known associates, including international calls, just says, "of course."

"He woke up yesterday.  I saw him this morning."  Eames controls his breathing, which wants to trip up, run away with him.  "It was like he didn't know who I was.  Or didn't think I was real."

Miles thinks and Eames lets him.  The nice thing about he and Eames is they don't mind each other's silences.  They have enough in common - working class backgrounds, military service, days of fighting and fucking and drinking too hard, too much, mostly left behind them both, regardless of the difference in their ages - to make silences companionable, not uncomfortable.  "Suicide attempt?" 

"No.  I don't know."  Arthur hadn't been preoccupied with his totem, or seemed suicidal.  "But, I think it wasn't.  I think he's just…lost…somewhere inside his head."  He doesn't know another way to say it.

"Well, then, son, your job is to solve the maze and help him get out."  

God knows, they can't lose both of them.  Not Mal and Arthur both, not the queen of dreams and her valiant knight.  Arthur's name should've been Lancelot, Eames thinks sometimes.  Their love was almost courtly.  But no, there was never any Camelot, or betrayals of that ilk.  Elizabeth Regina and her Walsingham was probably more apt.

Miles goes on, "but you can't do it by killing yourself.  You've got to take care.  What can I give you?"  It's a covert offer to lay his hands on a PASIV and get it to them in the States, if need be.  Arthur had always been careful to not take illegal jobs in the U.S..  He might have been a person of interest once or twice in Europol's eyes, but he kept his profile neat and clean back home - medical discharge, private security work, all very above-board.  Eames has a matching persona he uses for Stateside visits when he's with Arthur, and a green card to go with it.

Eames sighs.  "I'm getting us a house.  I don't know how long we'll be here.  California isn't recognizing the marriage this year or something.  I may have to take him somewhere that does."  On paper, they've been married for a couple years now, in Canada, although in Canada, they've been married someplace else.

"I suppose the police want to interview him."

"They can't while he's in hospital."

"That's a relief."

They discuss mundanities, leaving Eames feeling more refreshed than he has since they got the news Mal had jumped.  Since Arthur got the news.  Since police came to the house where he was watching the kids so Dom and Mal could celebrate their anniversary together, in 4-star comfort, and told him, to his face.  Caught him, fainting.  Since Arthur began his retreat from a reality too painful to bear. 

* * *

**Previously:**  

Eames blinked awake to the hotel room ceiling.  Arthur used to have a flat, he thought, in California.  Not far from the Cobbs.  He wondered what happened to it, why the hotel, now.  Maybe he just wanted to be close to the children, whose grandfather Miles was a few floors down.  He was taking them home with him for the duration, however long that was.  Eames wasn't awake enough to speculate.  His thinking was muzzy and unreliable before his first cuppa.

The bed was cold without Arthur's presence.  Eames dug his fingers into his own scalp, combing his hair back, sort of, and took a few deep breaths, then swung his legs out and walked over to the round table, the uncomfortable-looking chair Arthur had dragged over to the window, and Arthur himself slouched in it, staring out.  He was fairly confident whatever Arthur was looking at was not the view out the window.

The man was dressed in a suit, and clean-shaven.  Why he'd felt it necessary to undertake his morning grooming so soon after going to bed, Eames wasn't sure.  It still wasn't dawn yet.  Arthur just kept staring out the window, even as Eames approached and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Pet."  Eames said.

Arthur didn't move under his hand, so he gripped more firmly and repeated himself.  " _Pet_."  Gave a little shake.

"Mal?"

The funeral was set for Friday morning.  Eames felt a sick sensation lodge in his stomach, standing there in naught but his pants, wondering if Arthur would, dear God, actually last that long.  "No, pet.  It's just Eames."  Something was growing more and more wrong in Arthur.  It was like he was receding from the world, and Eames didn't know how to follow him, tug him back.  He was starting to think it would take one almighty catharsis at the funeral, or a psychiatric professional, to do it.

"Eames."  Arthur repeated dully, gaze still fixed a hundred miles away.

The first thing Eames had done when he'd gotten the news, was use a burner phone to call Cobb, who'd panicked and fled the scene, the city, and the country, almost immediately.  Idiot move.  Eames had been 20-plus hours out, inbound from Singapore, and Arthur, and Cobb's children, were left completely uncovered _all that time_.  Arthur, alone, in a state of collapse.  Arthur, alone, with the police.  Arthur, alone, with the children.  Arthur, who'd been in and out of that house his entire adult life, and who'd been "visiting" them there for weeks, because Mal…well, Mal was off.  Mal had asked for him to come, so Arthur'd gone.  It was just bad luck Eames was on the job and couldn't come with.  Towards the tail end of his job, Arthur'd called and asked Eames to come _now_ , if he possibly could.  He didn't want to spill anything over an unsecured line.  Complained Cobb wouldn't let him take her to a "real doctor".  Said he'd gotten a chemist to do some bloodwork, which showed the traces of extensive recent experimentation, but there were no undercover Psy.D's rolling about in dreamshare, more's the pity.  They could probably all use a good head-shrinker.  Arthur had laughed at Eames' quip - they'd both put in their time with military shrinks during and after the Project. Later, he'll think, that's the last time he'd heard Arthur's laugh.

Arthur said he would take her in to someone anyway, if Eames just forged the court paperwork to let him, or an I.D. so he could play Dom.  Or _something_ to force Mal to get some kind of treatment, or tests, or _something_.  Unless they mended things on their anniversary getaway.  "In which case, I'll buy you Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland, Eames, we can ride all the rides you want, and then we can go the hell _home_."

Only it was too late.  Too late.  _Too late_.  

He would not let it be too late for Arthur.  

Gripped again.  "You should go back to sleep, darling."  Then tugged him up to make it happen.

* * *

"Is he all right?"

"He's alive and receiving care."  No, he is not all right.  But he could be, with time.  And that's better off than Mal.

"Jesus, Eames, did  you have to commit him?"

"I'm not discussing the care of a mentally ill loved one with you, of all people."  Eames snaps.  "If you'd been a little less obsessed with the work and more with getting Mal help she needed, we wouldn't all be in this mess."

Cobb hangs up.  And not a second too soon.  Eames is trembling with fury.  It takes him a long time before he can put down the phone rather than throwing it.

* * *

Eames' attorney resolves the marriage issue by a temporary guardianship or some such, and Eames finds a little house in the Pasadena area with a nice back yard, and turns the dining room into his artist's studio.  

It's strange, being the sole decision-maker.   Eames knows, hopes, even, that it will be a problem later, once Arthur is feeling better, and Eames has to re-learn letting him make decisions.  For now, though, he supposes it is much like being a parent.  He does not let himself ever think that Arthur won't get better.  It's clear he's trying, even if, right now, it's largely to placate Eames.  The fact that he's willing to, that he seeks Eames' arms at night and cares about what Eames thinks at all, is significant.  Wherever Arthur is hiding in his mind, whatever armor he's surrounded himself with to not face reality, it has an Eames-shaped crack in it.

Eames hires a cleaning service, does most of the cooking, arranges for weekly landscaping while they are at the cemetery on Sundays, pays the bills, buys the furnishings.  He is the one who listens to the news of Cobb's ongoing legal fight with concern.  The one who fends off the calls from police wanting to know when they can interview Arthur.  Not if.  When.  Fends off similar calls from Cobb's lawyers.  His answer is always the same.  "When his doctor says it's all right."  The police or district attorney or someone of that ilk send a doctor of their own to interview Arthur's psychiatrist, then ask to sit in on a session.  With Eames' permission.  Everything requires his consent, his permission, his decision.  

Some days he wants to just scoop Arthur up and run, run away, as if they can run fast enough and far enough, to leave all their problems behind.  

It's highly likely that Arthur does have exculpatory evidence, or the most damning evidence of all, but he doesn't seem to be aware of it.  Or much of anything.  He never asks to go out, except to "visit Mal" on Sundays.  Doesn't leave the house except to go out into the yard.  He sleeps.  God, does he sleep.  Sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, only partly due to the medication he takes.  He never asks who anyone is, or where Cobb is.  The children.  Expresses no interest in anything except visiting Mal's grave every week, where he so clearly wishes he could stay forever.  

Eames lets him stay each time as long as he dares.  The first time they visited after Arthur was released, and Arthur wobbled to the ground at the foot of Mal's grave, Eames understood the phrase to have one's heart in one's mouth: he thought he'd very nearly vomit the organ up in its entirety, and open his eyes to find it beating on the neatly trimmed grass, by Arthur's still form.  

He wasn't sure it was the right decision to take him home that day rather than to hospital, until Arthur opened his eyes in the car, and Eames saw the trust in them.  The gratitude.  Eames had hospitalized him without his consent.  Medicated him.  Taken over his life, literally, his right to make decisions about himself, via a court order, and Arthur trusted him to do it.   

Christ Almighty.  

The second cemetery visit after Arthur came home, Eames could see past the panic to the way Arthur curled up at the foot of Mal's grave.  Almost contentedly, like a loyal dog at his mistress's feet.

And like a loyal dog, Arthur would either die of his pining, or, gradually, get back up.  

With Eames' support, it would be the latter.  It had to be.  It had to be.    

* * *

The Defense Ministry - strike that, Defense Department, _Department of Defense_ , damn them and all their secrets - representative arrives on a Tuesday when they'd been at the house for some months.  Eames is unpacking groceries.   The fight over whether Cobb would be indicted and extradited, or various other legal machinations occur sounded like it was winding down and he'd be returning to the U.S. soon one way or the other.

Eames has succumbed to the allure of grocery delivery and a CSA for his produce.  Whenever he leaves the house, even on days the cleaning service is there and keen on him out of their way, he worries about Arthur.  It's easier to have things delivered than fret through an hour of shopping.  There is also a hired nurse Eames has come in once or twice a week, for the afternoon, so he can go to the Huntington Library and wander about the gardens, or visit the Armory Center, for his sanity.  Though he frets some, there, too.

Eames is in the kitchen, washing fruit one piece at a time and placing it all in a sieve to drain before deciding if he wants to try a still life, and if so, in what style, when the besuited official and a military escort approach the door.  Assassins wouldn't announce themselves, so he doesn't detour to the gun safe on his way to answer the knock.  Arthur is in "his" room, probably napping.

"Good afternoon, sir," pronounces the Suit on his doorstep, with a bearing that matches the military stance of his uniformed companion.  "I'm looking for Mr. Arthur Cohen."

Eames leans into the doorsill, blocking the view into the house.  "Mr. Cohen is indisposed.  I'm his husband."

Not even a flicker of reaction crosses either man's features.  "It's important we speak with him, sir."

"No."  Eames crosses his arms, radiating disapproval.  "Arthur is seriously ill."

"It's a security matter, Mr. Henry."  

Eames takes note of the fact that he has not introduced himself to either man.  They know who he is, as John Eamon Henry today, and someone else, when he was in the Project.  He certainly knows who they are, or, who they represent.  And why they had come.  "No doubt.  However, Mr. Cohen," Eames enunciates, "is not receiving callers at present.  He is not receiving callers indefinitely."

The Suit, and the Uniform, have finally come to remind Arthur to keep his mouth shut about Project Somnacin.  How interesting.  Somewhere in the American military, a wheel is turning, gathering momentum.  He hopes Dom Cobb won't be crushed under it, sacrificed to keep secrets, as a murder conviction, better yet, a plea bargain resolving Mal's death with no further evidence-gathering, is no doubt preferable to an expose of dreamshare.

"If that changes, Mr. Henry, will you give him my card?"

Eames accepts it with a modicum of grace.

* * *

Miles becomes his lifeline to the wider world, they talk at least once a week, and it isn't until he finds himself crying on the phone to him that they both realize Eames needs help of his own that he's not getting.  He asks Arthur's psychiatrist for a referral, but all he really wants is his mother, to climb into her lap and let her soothe all his cares away, as if he were a child.

Time passes, as inexorable as ever.

* * *

There's a squeak as the back fence door is pushed open, followed by a voice, and it's not Arthur's voice, and that's all Eames needs to know.  He fetches a gun, quickly, and gets a view out the open window.  Arthur is where Eames left him, curled on the wooden chaise-thing that's wedged in the back corner of the yard, where the bamboo thrusts itself up to the sky.  Arthur likes shady spots on warm days, and being outdoors where there are things with roots.    It's a preference, at least, though a strange one to understand.  Trees over rosebushes and jasmine.  That's all right.  Eames will give him as many trees as he wants, if it will make Arthur smile.  He would love to see a smile again, even a little one, someday.  He doesn't see the owner of the voice, heads downstairs quickly but silently, and, spotting the back of a head, chooses his position.  

Female, armed, ex-military, maybe.  

"You're trespassing."  He says, from the best cover he can find, half-in, half-out of the sliding glass door.  "Drop your weapon before I drop you."

Arthur just watches them both, expressionless and a little bleary.  Disinterested.  He's wearing loose cotton pants and something that looks like a kurta as a top.  As usual, even when he's in the back yard, he's barefoot.  His feet are long and sleek.  Eames loves his feet, loves the way Arthur used to wander about barefoot before even taking off his suit, loves the exposed bones of his ankles, the pale high arch seeming almost scandalous when combined with one of his beautiful handmade suits.  

Now he's barefoot all the time, casually dressed all the time.  It's beautiful and unsettling at once.

"Police."  She says, not moving, hands slowly going up.  "Detective Lemus.  LAPD.  Let me get my i.d. out."

"Stay still."  Eames says flatly.  " _Police_ are supposed to identify themselves before barging onto private property."

She grinds her teeth for a while - Eames can hear it from his position - before answering, "Yes."

"If you're a detective, where's your partner."

She doesn't answer, but Eames didn't expect it.  "I thought he would recognize me."  Her hands stay up.  "I met him before.  At the Cobb house."

"Did you, now."  Eames does not take his eye off the spot on her head where his bullet will land if he pulls the trigger.  He thinks he believes her.  There was a Detective Lemus named in some of the materials going back and forth between the plethora of attorneys required to try and protect Cobb, the other attorneys trying to possibly put him away, and those devoted to keeping Arthur out of things while he slowly healed.  Eames concludes she tired of waiting and made an impulse stop to try and interview Arthur.  "I'll take that ID now."

"He's the person Mrs. Cobb talked to the most in the months preceding her death.  He was at the house on the day of her death. He made the _hotel reservation_ for them."

"I know."  Eames says.  Arthur had told him why he was going from the job in the Central African Republic straight to Los Angeles, instead of coming home to Eames.  "Mal asked me to come.  Something's not right."  Eames wasn't welcome in CAR, and the job hadn't needed a forger anyway, so he faffed about Luxor until time to leave for his own job in Jakarta, choosing to stick to the same continent as Arthur until then, for loyalty's sake more than fear he might need swift backup if the job went sour.  Arthur's jobs rarely went sour because he managed them to within an inch of their lives - that's why he was so highly valued as a point man in the first place.  Arthur would keep you alive if he had to kill you to do it, he'd heard someone say, once, and Eames had laughed himself silly over the phrasing.

Arthur looks back down at the drawing he'd been working on before falling asleep outside.  Before Eames thought he'd leave him dozing in the shade for a while while he showered off the traces of his gardening.  Eames is installing a succulent garden in a particularly sunny spot - very climate-appropriate, but no roots for Arthur, alas.  Arthur doesn't seem interested in drawing plants present in the garden, or not yet.  His drawings are filled with complex root systems, twining around and around into Gordian knot clumps.  Aspens, he thinks, which are all really one living plant, underground, though a grove looks like individual trees up top.  Eames wishes he knew what it meant.  

I didn't - "  she starts.  _Want to believe he's so mentally disturbed he can't talk to me_ , her demeanor clearly says.  "I just wanted to know -"

Arthur finally picks up his pencil and ignores them both, drawing a line on his page.  Eames' heart breaks just a little bit.

"Now you know," Eames tells her, tossing the badge to the ground in front of her feet.  "And now you can go."

She does.

* * *

Her Majesty's representative comes to see Eames on a Friday, calls him "Major."  

Another uniform, another suit (belonging to a consular official, this time), another business card.  This time, the veiled instructions are delivered to Eames' face, reminding him of his legal obligations to silence, accompanied by oblique threats if he doesn't.

"I understand,"  he says as meekly as possible, taking the card.

A few weeks later, Detective Lemus and her partner, one of Cobb's attorneys, and their own attorney, a district attorney? state's attorney? it's not his legal system so he has difficulty keeping track, are all clustered on the doorstep, arguing with each other about a warrant for Arthur as a material witness.  He keeps the door locked on their attorney's orders. ("Mr. Henry, do _not_ open this door.")  It takes a while for Eames to determine that there is not, in fact, such a warrant in existence at this time.  

"There could be," the detective mutters darkly to his welcome mat.  Later, Eames will consider removing it.  She isn't welcome _at all_.

* * *

On the way home from what Eames later labels in his mind as Mal's Luncheon, or, simply, The Incident, Arthur is quiet but not absent, alternating between looking out the window as if he's learning the route, and looking at their joined hands on the gear shift.  Eames doesn't like automatic transmissions much and tends to keep his hand draped on the gear shift regardless of use.  

After Arthur had repacked and shut up the boot of the car, clambered into the passenger seat and sat (deceptively calm, please let this not have been a terrible mistake), Eames steered them out of the cemetery, holding his breath past the point where Arthur had given himself a concussion trying to bang his way out of a different car headfirst.  Arthur doesn't look at him, just floats his hand down to rest it gently over Eames'.  Strokes with his thumb and fingers.  

Eames says nothing, driving, afraid to break the fragile-seeming silence.  

It's only after he steals a glimpse at Arthur and sees the faint smile on his face, actual emotion, actual engagement with something he's doing, that Eames breaks, and shifts his hand to interweave their fingers.  The end result is an aching arm by the time they get home, and soft smiles on his own - and Arthur's, oh, Arthur's - faces.

It's a day or two later that Arthur pats the sofa cushion invitingly, and tells Eames what he has yearned to hear: that, to stick with his (no, not insulting, he assures the acerbic little Arthur-voice in his head) dog metaphor, loyal unto death Arthur has gotten up from his pining and is going to live after all.

It's weeks after that, many exhilarating weeks, weeks of careful consultation with Arthur's psychiatrist (prefaced by a long phone conversation between her and Eames, wherein Eames shocks himself with sudden weeping as he tries to describe the aliveness of him, that Arthur is coming back to them), with Miles, of starting the laborious process of stepping down various doses of medications, of a hundred things, that Arthur hands him his tea cup one afternoon and says, "I think it's time I gave a statement."

Eames stops, paint on his fingers, cup halfway to his mouth.  

"Yes, love," he says, faintly.

* * *

Arthur's psychiatrist is a no-nonsense type, and Eames has never appreciated her more than when she says to their various countries' military and law enforcement minions: "That man is my patient.  If I say stop, you stop.  Got it?"  And she refuses to let them in to where Arthur is waiting for them until every damn one of them gives their word.  Eames is half in love with her for it before they even get through the door.

The assembled cast are: Doctor, patient, husband, DOD minion, Her Majesty's minion, escorts for same, a JAG officer whose sole purpose, so far as Eames can discern, is to ensure no one says anything important, a partridge in a pear tree, a squad of attorneys representing Arthur, Cobb, the state of California, or the United States, or both, another psychiatrist who works for one of them, Detective Lemus and her partner whose name Eames cannot recall since the man has done nothing to earn his ire, a court reporter, and probably five or six others to round out the Greek chorus.

The JAG officer is a lowly captain, and Eames vows privately to repay the United States military for that insult, with interest, at some point in the future. 

Arthur has some notes with him, but he doesn't consult them at all.  Just nods at the wall of attorneys and the court reporter, and begins speaking, stating his name and particulars.  

As soon as it sounds like he's getting to anything actually relevant to Cobb's case, the JAG officer leans forward to make the military's presence - and threats, no doubt - known, "Lt. Colonel Cohen-"

Arthur moves his hand.  "I really am retired from the Air Force, Captain."

The officer clears his throat and flushes.  "Yes, sir."

"I'll continue, then?"

"...Yes, sir."

Eames thinks very hard for the next few moments about not moving any muscle in his face.  Some of the others don't work quite so diligently, at the sight of a keelhauling.

"I met Mallorie before her marriage to Dominic Cobb.  She worked as a civilian research scientist on a sleep-related research project for which I served as liaison for a time."  Eames sees Detective Lemus mouth "sleep?" at her partner, who shrugs back.  Arthur notices, of course.  "You may never have thought about it, but the study of sleep, sleep deprivation, sleep disorders, and the like are of strategic and tactical military interest from multiple perspectives: whether it's building training programs, optimizing personnel deployments, or improving the treatment of brain injuries and psychological disorders in our injured soldiers."  _And the like_ has to be the most elegant way to reference lucid dreaming, the existence of dreamshare, and the entire Somnacin program without giving anything away that Eames has heard in years.  Arthur's voice has slid all the way into what Eames thinks of as his military scientist voice.  It makes him sound so reasonable no one even moves a muscle as he speaks.  "There's a lot of biochemistry and pharmacology - psychotropics, sedatives, experimental drugs - as well as psychology involved." 

Eames realizes, with a growing sense of exhilaration and admiration, that every word Arthur intends to say today will in fact be the truth.  By God, he wants to blurt out everything himself just so they can all appreciate Arthur's _finesse_. 

"Mallorie met Dom when he joined the same project, and they married about a year later.  We worked together very well as a team, and after I was discharged from the Air Force on medical grounds, we formed a civilian consulting company.  We do a lot of strategic logistical consulting for corporations as well as the DOD.  I often do the more strenuous travel, with or without Dom, so he and Mal can stay near the kids as much as possible."  Arthur clears his throat.  "Could."

Someone in Eames' field of vision nods.

"At the same time, Mallorie was continuing various avenues of her research.  She did a study at UCLA's sleep disorder clinic and somewhere else.  Walter Reed, most likely.  There's a military sleep clinic there.  Lucid dreaming as a therapeutic tool.  Things like that.  Published a couple papers."  

 _Lucid dreaming as a therapeutic tool_.  _Things like that_.Again, elegant.  

"And, then, something changed."  Arthur looks down again, as if at his notes, but doesn't shuffle them to look for anything.  "I guess it was over a year ago now, but she started sounding different on the phone.  It was like…"

Arthur moves for only the first or second time since beginning speaking, and takes Eames' hand.  "She told me she thought she was asleep.  And she wanted to wake up."

He squeezes Eames' fingers hard.  "She laughed it off later, told me she'd been joking.  But then she'd make references to it, repeatedly, and it was like…this idea had taken hold of her, slowly, that the world wasn't real."

He turns to Eames.  "When she told me she needed a way to wake Dom up, that's when I headed here.  I couldn't wait."

Eames nods.  They breathe, together, Arthur's eyes are very wide, and his psychiatrist is watching them very closely.  Then he swallows and turns back to his audience, says in his most academic-military-scientist-teacher voice:  "Pop quiz, people.  How do you wake up from a dream?"  He gives them a moment,  then ticks off on the fingers of his free hand.  "You just do it without trying, you sort of will yourself awake once lucid by concentrating really hard, and - you die."

Everyone but Eames and Arthur takes a shared, sudden breath of realization.

"Mal said she wanted to wake up.  Then she said she wanted to wake Dom up, make him wake himself up."  Arthur sighs.  "She wanted to kill herself, and her husband, to wake them both up."  He picks the notes back up just to crumple them.  "I think, because she thought I was part of the dream, I wouldn't try to stop her.  So it was safe to say to me."

Varying degrees of crogglement are visible on nearly everyone's faces, followed by shades of satisfaction - on the faces of Cobb's attorneys - displeasure - on the government attorneys and the two detectives - absolute poker-face - on their own attorney, the JAG captain, and a few others.  Both psychiatrists are watching Arthur with considerable concern.  Who is shaking.

Arthur's doctor says, "That's it, we're done," at exactly the same time Arthur's demeanor cracks and he blurts to Eames, "I'm so sorry I couldn't save her."

The next couple of minutes are filled with Arthur clutching at Eames and his composure at the same time, his doctor throwing everyone out, a lawyer voice, one of Cobb's, saying phrases like "happy to put a highly decorated veteran on the stand with testimony like that", "drop all charges?", "he left the scene of a suicide, counsellor, where's the obstruction?", the entire squad of humanity _exuent alles_ , possibly pursued by a bear, and Arthur protesting once the door is shut that he doesn't want the doctor's needle and the sedative in it, but _Eames_ , he'll take a pill once he gets into the car, but he really just wants to sleep in his own bed tonight, with his own husband, and not at the hospital.  _Please, Eames, wouldn't that be all right?  Can't I go home with you?_

Rather surprisingly, his psychiatrist says ok, swaps out the needle for a little pill of something milder, but makes Arthur take it on the spot, and then takes his blood pressure two or three times for good measure over the next half hour before she lets them leave, with another pill of something stronger to take in a few hours.  And to call for an emergency appointment tomorrow if he needs it, but otherwise rest, and mourn, and she'll see Arthur for his usual appointment the following day.

Overall, she seems quite pleased as Eames finally steers Arthur gently out the door.  Huh.

* * *

Dom Cobb is a free man within a couple of weeks.  It's a stunning turn of events that Eames tends to forget when he's first woken, and then is shocked by moments later. 

Eames and Arthur spend a good chunk of that time just curled up together one way or another.  It might be another year, maybe longer, before they leave the country again, get back to work, or retire fully from dreamshare.  If ever.  Just then, Eames doesn't care all that much which it will be, so long as he has Arthur, alive, and smiling back at him.


End file.
